River of Hope: Black Politics and the Memphis Freedom Movement, 1865–1954

2. "The Fight . . . to Make America Safe for Americans"

51 2 “The Fight . . . to Make America Safe for Americans” Memphis as a Political Model for the Region and the Country, 1917–1927 The Lincoln League’s 1916 victory at the polls inaugurated a new era of formal political mobilization for black Memphians. They also expanded their activism into new avenues such as NAACP and Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CIC) chapters. They pressed for economic opportunities, civil rights, improved public services, political influence, and an end to lynching. Robert R. Church Jr. became increasingly involved on the national political scene and emerged as the country’s most prominent black Republican. He transformed the local Lincoln League into the Lincoln League of America, an influential black political organization that was part of the upsurge of black activism during the World War I era. The political efforts of black Memphians culminated in 1927 when they mobilized to vote the incumbent mayor out of office and elect a candidate who incorporated their demands into his platform. In all these ways, Church and black Memphians upset social constructions of African Americans as politically apathetic, carved out a political space for themselves, and influenced the political process to meet their goals. World War I and its aftermath exacerbated racial tensions nationwide . Many whites resented the authority of black servicemen and the dramatic spike in civil rights agitation. The NAACP and other activist organizations grew in size, black periodicals advocating racial advancement enjoyed wide circulation, and union drives and black migration north increased.1 African Americans pressed white Americans to face the contradiction of the United States fighting for democracy and freedom abroad but not granting them its constitutional protec- 52 RIVER oF HoPE tions at home. Instead of seeing their hopes fulfilled, however, African Americans faced new and continued obstacles. They saw riots break out in urban areas, with the violence peaking in the Red Summer of 1919: 120 whites and blacks died, and 15 African Americans were lynched in more than a dozen communities nationwide.2 Although no wartime or postwar riots occurred in Memphis, racial tensions were heightened.3 Just six months after the Lincoln League’s success in 1916, black Memphians experienced a blow when Ell Persons , a black woodchopper, was burned to death in May 1917. Even though evidence strongly pointed to a white killer, Persons had been charged with murdering a white teenage girl on the outskirts of the city. Law enforcement officials forced him to confess after beating him. A posse of local citizens formed, and government officials and the police failed to protect him. After the local press published his whereabouts , the posse captured him. The press publicized the upcoming lynching to take place five miles outside Memphis. Fifteen thousand local residents, some of whom took their children out of school, came. While the mother of the dead girl voiced her approval of the lynching, vendors sold sandwiches to the crowd. The mob tied Persons to a log, and two men cut off his ears before flames engulfed him. Afterward, many whites mutilated his body. Some onlookers, including women with children in their arms, scrambled to get bits of his body and clothing for souvenirs. The mob tied an American flag to the log, and whites proceeded to throw Persons’s bodily remains onto Beale Street. The lynchers were never prosecuted. only after the tragedy did local white clergymen accept responsibility for failing to warn against mob violence. The white Memphis Press called all white citizens complicit and asked them to determine whether they wanted a society of law and order. Engaged in an antilynching campaign at this time, the national office of the NAACP investigated the tragedy. Robert R. Church Jr. drove the field secretary, James Weldon Johnson, a longstanding friend of his, to the lynching site. Johnson interviewed the sheriff, journalists, many African Americans, and some local whites. He wrote a special report, and the organization’s magazine, the Crisis, used the incident to highlight the regionwide phenomenon of lynching , reporting that 2,867 black men had been lynched from 1885 to 1916.4 That July in New York City, the NAACP spotlighted the Persons tragedy in its Silent Parade against lynching, segregation, disenfranchisement , and discrimination. As a result of the Persons lynching, “The Fight . . . to Make America Safe for Americans” 53 many black Memphians migrated north, joining the 1.2 million black southerners who from 1915 to 1929 left the violence, segregation, disenfranchisement...